Its fair play to the Beeb this morning as it appears to have brought the Pestogate image scandal to an end by giving El Reg a two-finger salute*:
The BBC finally sticks its own photo on the piece
Splendid. That's a BBC photo of a BBC building all right, and here for the record are some other photos of BBC buildings not by …

@Irish Donkey

You know, I have to agree with you. I too wish there was more ACTA coverage around here. Andrew O writes the odd article, but I hardly consider him unbiased. It would be nice to have a few different viewpoints offered about what I personally think is one of the single most important topics not only as regards intellectual property (and thus IT,) but sovereignty issues, the nature of democracy and international politics.

I’ll have to join in here and moan a bit about the lack of ACTA coverage ‘round these parts.

In the meantime, I would like to direct you at Dr Michael Geist’s absolutely excellent blog (http://www.michaelgeist.ca/) which covers ACTA (amongst other copyright issues) in extraordinary depth.

It should be pointed out that Ars Technica (http://arstechnica.com/) also has fantastic ACTA coverage. With the addition of Mary Jo Foley’s (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft) excellent Microsoft Blog, you have Trevor Pott’s personal list of IT related “morning newspapers.”

El Reg has the best all around and overall tech coverage; they most especially fantastic offer gadget, HPC and startup coverage in a balanced, critical and sometimes cynical view that I simply can’t find elsewhere on the net. Let us not also forget that bootnotes are grand; mocking stupid people can sometimes be a bit of a pick me up after a long day of dealing with users. (Does that make me a bad person?)

Ars Technica offers a more balanced view on intellectual property issues, often attacking it from all points of any debate, though they are for all intents and purposes Apple apologists. I find their technical coverage a little lacking, but they make up for it in the absolutely phenomenal science coverage. The Nobel Intent section is heads and shoulders above anything found anywhere else on the net.

Dr Geist’s blog is the most in dept source of intellectual property information I have found on the net that isn’t a legal website. So much so that even Ars often uses him as a source. He is fastidious about linking to his sources, and I consider him one of the premier researchers and authorities on the subject in the world.

Mary Jo Foley is just plain all out awesome, her coverage of Microsoft is something I find critical to my job, as it helps me anticipate the great beast’s movements months if not years ahead of time. Since I still have a lot of Microsoft software deployed, this is great information. So good in fact that El Reg uses her for a source on a number of things.

So there you have it; while I would love to say that my beloved Vulture Central covers everything, there is no tech website I have yet found that manages to do so. Certainly there is none that manages to cover every topic from a number of different angles and viewpoints so as to offer totally well rounded coverage. (The amount of wetware that would take is probably obscene.) Overall I think El Reg is probably the best out there…

How not to save money

Wouldn't they have had to pay for the publication of each photograph used irrespective of how long it appeared for? So instead of sticking with the original they had to pay three more times, once to PA, again to Getty and I suppose the BBC photo library has a different cost centre so once to them but nothing for the teaboy.

Yes they do have a Bush House

My Dad worked there for a while in the 70's. They ran the Foreign Service from there (ie shortwave broadcasts aimed at Iron Curtain countries). It was a hotbed of dissident emigres at the time. I don't know what they use it for now, apart from photo-ops.

Being thick

The alt text is priceless:

"The BBC's news and current affairs programmes and news website have annual agreements with AP, PA, AFP, Allsport and Getty Images for image use. This image has been changed six times at a cost to the licence-fee payer of a few pence in terms of man-hours, which will be made up for in overtime."

<img alt = LOLS

<img alt="The BBC's news and current affairs programmes and news website have annual agreements with AP, PA, AFP, Allsport and Getty Images for image use. This image has been changed six times at a cost to the licence-fee payer of a few pence in terms of man-hours, which will be made up for in overtime."

The BBC

Somehow, despite not having watched any TV for the last few days, the BBC have entertained me almost every day this week. Thanks, BBC, and El Reg, for this tremendously funny saga. I have no doubt that "Pestongate: The Costume Drama" will be coming to BBC2 before the end of the year.

read the alt tag, idiots

<img alt="The BBC's news and current affairs programmes and news website have annual agreements with AP, PA, AFP, Allsport and Getty Images for image use. This image has been changed six times at a cost to the licence-fee payer of a few pence in terms of man-hours, which will be made up for in overtime." src="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/wood_lane595.jpg" width="595" height="187" class="mt-image-center" style="text-align: center; display: block; margin: 0 auto 20px;">

Miserable sods on El Reg...

It may not be the greatest news story in the world but it is a mildly amusing tale of a BBC webmaster/editor having a bit of a larf with the Register. As far as costing tax payers money if you think a couple of pence in man-hours is wasting money (the BBC apparently has an all-you-can-eat agreement with Getty and PA so it didn't cost them anything extra for flip-flopping between images), compared to some of the absolute tosh the BBC output (and huge expense), then you are quite clearly stark raving bonkers!

MORE LIKE THIS PLEASE!

"The BBC's news and current affairs programmes and news website have annual agreements with AP, PA, AFP, Allsport and Getty Images for image use. This image has been changed six times at a cost to the licence-fee payer of a few pence in terms of man-hours, which will be made up for in overtime." - the alt. text

Excellant. Here's to the good Ship El Reg, long may she wind up the establishment!

Nice one, Beeb!

I like the linkback, the pointless but amusing changing of images, and that even The Corporation has been shown to have a sense of humour.

So maybe it's a slow news day. Better than hearing what the Supreme Court cocks up this time, or the <yawn>ongoing saga</yawn> of the iFans loss of love for the leftie-unfriendly new iGizmo that sheep flocked to buy even before a decent independent review hit The Wired. [oops, gratuitous Apple-dig (iDig?), downvotes ahoy!]